Return of predator evals sought

The Kansas Department of Corrections is taking bipartisan heat for the unilateral decision to save $22,500 a month by bringing to a halt psychological evaluations essential to the process of indefinitely placing sexually violent predators in state custody.

The two leading candidates for attorney general — incumbent Democrat Steve Six and Republican Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt — denounced suspension of a KDOC contract in early April.

The state stopped paying for forensic analysts to perform evaluations on inmates guilty of sexually violent crimes who were nearing completion of prison sentences and under consideration for parole.

Without sophisticated psychological screening of the prisoners, state prosecutors would find it difficult to win civil commitment cases in district court requiring proof a prior offender was likely to engage in dangerous sexual behavior in the future and should be held for treatment.

More than 160 of these Kansas inmates have been involuntarily placed in a state facility at Larned. Typically, five new post-sentence commitment cases are filed each month in Kansas. Absent funding for assessments, those prisoners would go free.

Money the object

Schmidt said the state's $500 million revenue shortfall wouldn't deter legislators from finding $270,000 annually to resume the contract with Correct Care Solutions, a health care management company with an office in Topeka.

"Nobody here would have agreed to cut that funding," said Schmidt, an Independence Republican. "It's a disappointing decision."

Six said Kansas must maintain a system to keep dangerous sex offenders off the streets even after prison sentences expired.

"They need to be evaluated to see if they're a risk to the community," Six said. "The money and the cuts we're talking about are taking away our ability to do those assessments and to have psychologists look at these people so we know what kind of danger they are."

Bill Miskell, spokesman for the state corrections department, defended the budget-cutting decision by Secretary Roger Werholtz.

The agency was ordered to trim $3.8 million from the coming fiscal year's budget and Werholtz decided to spread a portion of that reduction into the current fiscal year by dropping the contract with Correct Care Solutions.

"They were performing evaluations that were not core functions," Miskell said.

Budget woes also forced the agency to shut down four prison facilities, curtail offender programs and shutter two boot camp facilities.

Fix will be found

Schmidt said financing for the sexual offender evaluations was in a budget bill expected to be debated this week by the Senate. Another proposal would earmark funding for the contract by adding $1 to a fee paid by people involved in municipal court traffic cases.

There is wide political support in the House and Senate to sustain the civil commitment program, which has been successfully defended before the U.S. Supreme Court.

"It's a high priority for everyone in this building," Schmidt said.

Six sent letters to legislative leaders asserting they had no choice but to reverse the corrections department's maneuver.

"Failure to act to restore funding for these psychologists will increase the likelihood of sexually violent predators re-entering society," he said.

About 20 states have civil commitment laws to continue incarceration of sexual predators after they served sentences ordered at the conclusion of criminal trials. Kansas was the first state to adopt the supplemental method of holding prisoners.

In 1997's Kansas vs. Hendricks, the nation's high court ruled 5-4 that the Kansas Sexually Violent Predator Act — which sets up procedures for the civil commitment of people who due to a "mental abnormality" or a "personality disorder" are likely to engage in "predatory acts of sexual violence" — didn't violate the due process, or fair proceedings, guarantee of the Constitution.

In 2002's Kansas vs. Crane, the Supreme Court ruled Kansas and other states must make some determination a sexual predator can't control his behavior when committing someone to an indefinite term. The justices affirmed the Kansas law was neither double jeopardy, or a second criminal punishment for the same crime, nor an "ex post facto" new punishment for a previous crime.

View from trenches

Christine Ladner, the assistant attorney general assigned to civil commitment cases, said there was irony in the Kansas corrections secretary's decision. Other states look to Kansas as a model for adjudicating sexually violent predator cases, she said.

Kansas law requires sexually violent criminals to be evaluated 90 days before released on parole to determine whether each has the potential to reoffend. Assessments by Correct Care Solutions were a key piece of evidence relied upon by a multidisciplinary team, led by Ladner, that decided each month which civil commitment cases would be filed throughout the state.

"Expert opinions are so critical because of the definition of what a sexually violent predator is," Ladner said.

She said terms "mental abnormality" and "personality disorder" must be weighed by psychological practitioners with fine-tuned skills suitable for testimony in court hearings.

"Typically," Ladner said, "what I see so often is a mental abnormality of pedophilia combined with a personality disorder, such as anti-social disorder. Those are diagnosis that need to be made by somebody."

She said derailment of the commitment system was unacceptable from her seat in the prosecutorial trenches.